Fig. 5: Quorum signal perturbation reveals accelerated tendril formation, biomass redistribution, and no competitive disadvantage.

a Proportion of all tendril biomass along tendril length localized to the indicated regions of a swarm tendril defined graphically in Fig. 4c: Swarm center (top), mid-tendril region (middle), and tendril edge (bottom). The tendril edge is defined as the outermost 4.5 mm of a swarming tendril relative to the swarm center. All statistical comparisons performed with the two-sided rank-sum test. *** indicates a p-value < 0.001. Results where the null hypothesis was not rejected are indicated by n.s. b Swarming start times with or without autoinducer in the plate media. c Specific growth rate in the tendril tip (outermost 0.86 mm of swarming tendril) in swarms without (left) and with (right) quorum signals provided. The two distributions were compared using the two-sided rank-sum test, p-value < 2.22e−16. Stem plot indicates distribution median. Mean and standard deviation indicated above histogram. Histogram bar with (*) contains all points with specific growth rate greater than maximum x-axis value. d Competition results for WT PA14 against the ∆rhlA strain in 1:1 ratio with quorum signals in the plate media (see methods). Data includes three biological replicates with several technical replicates in each. See Supplementary Table 1.